FRIDAY NIGHT TASTINGS with Palmina Winery and Steve Clifton, former SCHS Grad!

Friday, March 23rd We welcome PALMINA WINERY, Lompoc, CA.

Welcoming Steve Clifton , San Clemente High School graduate and distinguished winemaker. 

Tasting fee is $15 for 7 wines with cheese, crackers & chocolate. 

ABOUT PALMINA WINERY:

Steve Clifton, winemaker and owner, produced the first Palmina wines in the basement of his home in 1995. His career in the wine industry had begun in 1992 when he left his previous incarnations as a musician and nightclub entrepreneur behind and decided to beg his way into a tasting room position at Rancho Sisquoc winery. Little by little he forced his way into the cellar and in time Steve worked his way up to Assistant Winemaker.

Over the next few years Steve’s on the job schooling would include production and winemaking positions at Beckmen, Brander and Domaine Santa Barbara wineries. To round out his knowledge in the marketing and sales area of the industry, from 1995 to 1998, Steve managed The Wine Cask retail store in Santa Barbara. Steve met Greg Brewer in 1995 and formed the partnership that has become Brewer-Clifton, a winery solely devoted to vineyard-designated Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the Sta. Rita Hills appellation in western Santa Barbara County. Brewer-Clifton’s first release began with the wines produced from the 1996 vintage. To find out more about the Brewer-Clifton winery, please visit their website.

While Steve shares a phenomenal passion for Burgundian varietals with his partner Greg, he came to his love for wine from Italian grape varietals in a somewhat unusual way. His appreciation began while working in restaurants, supporting himself through college in the late ‘80s. A trip to Italy to visit family inspired him to find work in an Italian restaurant in Laguna Beach where under the mentorship of his good friend Michael Whipple he learned all that he could about Italian wines. At an industry tasting Steve was amazed when he realized the immense similarities between his favorite Barolos and Barbarescos and the red Burgundies. Instant bi-polar disorder followed - while Brewer-Clifton pursues the purest possible expression of Burgundian varietals, Palmina is a passion project devoted to producing exclusively Italian varietal wines.

http://palminawines.com/